I'm a writer. But there are zillions of writers. Here's some of my stuff.

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Closing the book again

Getting new carpeting in the bedroom tomorrow and moving out the loose objects lying about. Found the book I took with me when we drove Fyl to the hospital about 2 am on August 8, 2008. A highly regarded novel by a Glen Duncan called Death of An Ordinary Man. I had gotten up to the tenth page when she died. I looked on in stunned silence. Her lips were a vivid blue. Her eyes stared. Her skin a pallid white. They managed to revive her after a few minutes, a whole century’s worth of a few minutes, and her lips turned red, her eyes closed, her skin flushed crimson with fever. I remember sitting down again after an hour or so and opening the book. They’d had Lois cremated, the paragraph began. I distinctly remember thinking that I couldn’t read this just then, put the book aside and never did reopen it. Until just now, nearly a decade later, when I found it in a stack of books on the nightstand. I flipped it open to the bookmarked page, read that they’d had Lois cremated and closed the book again. Maybe later. Now I sit here staring at the words I’d just written, trying to forget.

My latest writing at: Brick's Picks

There was the night about a decade ago that I was hanging out at Hollywood & Highland with a multi-Grammy winning pal and then sharing a table at a jazz dive with three other Grammy winners watching an Oscar winning pal playing some terrific saxophone. At the time, tho’, that didn’t seem anything special. I […]

My latest writing at: Brick's Politics

Ghosting. ‪A millennial thing that boomers and GenXers are so appalled by. Take this job and shove it. We’ve all sung that quietly to ourselves at some shit job. But that’s all we ever did, sing it to ourselves. Some millennials just have the nerve to actually do it. After all, corporations have been doing […]

Thrilled to see we won the House in a blue wave, despite James Carville. Did better than I thought in Senate, and way better with governors. Can’t wait to see state house results. I thought Nelson would and Gillum might win, sad, thought Kemp’s suppression would work, it did (decisively), and thought Beto would lose […]

My latest writing at: Brick's History

As 19th century oratory, the Gettysburg Address was a failure. Lincoln himself said so as the weak and scattered applause subsided. But when printed on the front page of papers all across the North, it was a gem. Perfect. Poetic. Memorized and recited by everyone from politicians to preachers to schoolchildren to soldiers. It still […]

(March 5th, 2017) Stalin died on this day in 1953. It was a peaceful passing, in his own bed. His corpse was embalmed and treated and put on display next to Lenin’s, and the people passed by in their hundreds of thousands, never realizing till then just what a little guy–five foot four inches–Stalin had […]

My latest writing at: Brick's Science

Today is National Poop Day, apparently, and here is my fossilized poop collection. It didn’t used to be a collection but a stoner asked me what it was and I said it’s a coprolite, and he said what’s that and I said fossilized feces and he dropped it. He apologized profusely but I said don’t […]

Turns out that the word helicopter is made from the the classic Greek stems helico, meaning spiral, and pter, meaning winged, as in pterodactyl or pterosaur or pterpaulanmerisaur. Which means that helicopter should be pronounced helicoter, long o, silent p, which will make you even more irritating to your friends. Try it next time one […]

My latest writing at: Brick's Brain

Thought I was writing a lot. Lots of tweets, really well written tweeted miniature essays. Plus viciously smartassed snarks to make the Trump supporters cry. One really long email that came out of nowhere remembering stuff I hadn’t thought of in years. Messaging. Lots of words. A froth of words. Ideas in Brownian motion. Stuff […]

I’ve been on cold meds on and off for a few days, mostly on. This morning in the LA Times I came across an unusually lyrical passage for a newspaper and I read it aloud to my wife. It was about oil pumps and mechanical giraffes and I just dug it to death. She nodded, […]